Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that practicing even small doses of daily meditation may improve focus and performance.  Meditation, according to Penn neuroscientist Amishi Jha and Michael Baime, director of Penn’s Stress Management Program, is an active and effortful process that literally changes the way the brain works. Their study is the first to examine how meditation may modify the three subcomponents of attention, including the ability to prioritize and manage tasks and goals, the ability to voluntarily focus on specific information and the ability to stay alert to the environment.

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How do you react when you make a mistake, or when you fail? Do you have a plan for using failure to help you succeed? Top performers and achievers have developed powerful cognitive strategies for bouncing back from seeming defeats in order to catapult themselves to the next level of success. You can develop these strategies too.

The method lies in developing powerful, tested cognitive advance performance strategies. What your mind sees and believes, you can achieve!

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At Kaizen Golf, the PlayersFOCUS, we implement five coaching techniques that can be revolutionizing within the athlete in every aspect of their lives.

Transformation Thinking

Perhaps the most common mind tool of all, transformational thinking involves being aware of thoughts and emotions that creates one’s internal living experience.  Take notice that this is transformational and not positive thinking.  One’s thought process has to move beyond just mere positive and into realms of transformation for revolutionary change.  Every person in the world has at least one positive thought a day, but also thousands of negative thoughts a day.  So, just being positive is not the solution.  It is in recognizing the disempowering thoughts and transforming them into new empowering thoughts.  Then from there, that is what you focus on.  Resulting in the Transformation of the Mind to Transforming Emotions, which will naturally Transform Performance.

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All athletes love the wonderful, sought after state of mind known as “the zone.” This state of supreme focus helps athletes in all sports perform at their highest.  Many athletes who want to reach their infinite potential are always in search of secrets to get into the "zone."  But the zone is really just a mere myth when you begin to understand and become comfortable in your own skin, in what I call: Performance STYLE!

What is "Performance STYLE"

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Research and experience have proven that “Advanced Performance” is the result of proper physical, nutritional and psychological training, development, implementation and preparation. I will also add it is the balanced lifestyle of the Mind, Body, and Spirit of the individualized athlete.  Most athletes are aware of and use proper “body” preparation but very few incorporate all three essential instruments of life into their training routines to create perfect harmony. With the synchronization of all three components, every athlete can gain the confidence edge and as a result, advance performance more consistently at the top of their potential.

“Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.” - Arnold Palmer

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Australian psychologist Allen Richardson conducted an experiment with basketball players performing jump shots.  He divided them into three groups.

Group A – was to practice their jump shots on the court for 20 minutes
Group B – was asked not to practice at all
Group C – was asked to mentally visualize and rehearse over and over shooting and making jump shots through a basketball hoop for 20 minutes a day.

At the end of the study, Group A improved their shooting ability by 25%.  Group B, as expected showed no improvement at all.  To everyone’s surprise, Group C improved by 24%, almost as much as Group A, even though they had not physically set foot on the court.  Now just imagine what the athlete can achieve when adding the practice of clear imagery to their daily routine.

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